UN dialogues approve climate pact principles

Poland’s former Environment Minister and COP President Marcin Korolec (right) and Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, attend the 19th conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP19 in Warsaw on Saturday (Sunday in Manila). AFP PHOTO

WARSAW: United Nations (UN) negotiators agreed in fraught overtime talks on Saturday (Sunday in Manila) on cornerstone issues of an ambitious, global climate pact to stave off dangerous Earth warming.

While sleep-deprived delegates congratulated themselves on the outcome, which followed 36 hours of non-stop haggling at the end of a fortnight of talks, observers and climate-vulnerable nations said there was not much to be happy about.

“Just in the nick of time, the negotiators in Warsaw delivered enough to keep the process moving,” said climate analyst Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute.

But climate economist Nicholas Stern warned that “the actions that have been agreed are simply inadequate when compared with the scale and urgency of the risks that the world faces from rising levels of greenhouse gases, and the dangers of irreversible impacts.”

Rich and poor nations have been at loggerheads ever since the talks opened on November 11 over who should do what to curb the march of planet warming.

In particular, they clashed over sharing responsibility for curbing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions, and about funding for vulnerable countries.

The negotiations had threatened to collapse on Friday amid vehement squabbling between developed and developing nations over their respective contributions to the goal of curbing average planet warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 deg Fahrenheit).

The UN-backed target must be reached by national curbs of climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions, but the two camps disagree fundamentally about who must bear the most responsibility.

Emerging economies like China and India objected to any reference in the Warsaw text to “commitments” that would be equally binding to rich and poor states and failed to consider historical greenhouse gas emissions.

Developing nations, their growth largely powered by fossil fuel combustion, blame the West’s long emissions history for the peril facing the planet, and insist their wealthier counterparts carry a larger responsibility to fix the problem.

The West, though, insists emerging economies must do their fair share, given that China is now the world’s biggest emitter of CO2, with India in fourth place after the United States and Europe.

On current emissions trends, scientists warn the Earth could face warming of 4.0 C or higher—a recipe for catastrophic storms, droughts, floods and land-gobbling sea-level rise that would hit poor countries disproportionally hard.

“It took a lot of effort, you could see a lot of drama and different interests, but in the end . . . people saw there was a real risk that we would not manage to make the progress that we so badly needed,” said European climate envoy Connie Hedegaard.

Due to enter into effect in 2020, the Paris deal will be the first to bind all nations to curbing atmosphere-polluting greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and gas.